Fairys... what are they?

[cursuswalker]

Actually, CursusWalker, I've decided that if I haven't got anything positive to say, I won't say anything, so please ignore that last post. I have no evidence. I've never seen a faerie, and it's all in my mind. I can positively say that faeries do not exist. There - settled.

TOO LATE!

If you have any verifiable evidence to the contrary please present it, as I am prepared to change my mind on all the above upon presentation of such evidence.

If you could tell me what dimension or level of reality these experiences exist in, then perhaps we could agree upon a trusted piece of scientific instrumentation with which it capture such evidence or experiences of such? Perhaps you have knowledge of how this equipment could be used? Then we could examine it together and derive our conclusions from that, I suggest.

I know of no other dimension or reality than this one.

Other dimensions COULD exist, and crucially there could be sentient beings living in them. Those dimensions COULD bleed into our own. It's just that I have yet to see any evidence strong enough to beleive this actually is the case.

As for "realities", this is surely a self-contradictory term? "Reality" is, by definition, the sum of all that is so. Hence, the plural of what you call a "reality" would be....Reality.

[Rhiannon56]

Fairies are useful in magic. I believe in their existence and can suggest two very Good books in regards to them---Brian Froud's Good Fairy, Bad Fairy and The Ancient Art of Fairy Magick by DJ Conway. Both are really good books. Brian's book is based on ancient legends.

Also any book on Irish and Welsh mythology would mention them. I believe Rhiannon was a fairy queen if I'm not wrong. Then you can get into the Fay and the Seelie and UnSeelie Courts.

[Frederik]

I do not believe that fairies exist - I know it.

Science is an important thing, but there is far more on earth that science hasn't discovered yet and wasn't able to prove - which doesn't mean it does not exist. It just proves that science hasn't been able to prove it yet.

It's sometimes hard to believe in anything in a world of sarcasm and in which everything that can't be put into a rational pattern has no right to exist, and is called ill or just stupid and crazy. The world cannot fully realized by brain, but that's what one is being taught.

I know they are there - I can talk to them in my mind, when I am in a clear and friendly mood, and to a certain place, and when I close my eyes a bit I can realise movements. Sometimes they are very kind to me, when I am feeling sad, sometimes full of fun and make me chuckle, sometimes they are wild like storm.

I believe they are connected with us, like we all are connected, and that they are our friends, like all living beings are.

They are like in another world in our world and we can sense them with the same kind of sense that allows us to contact our inner guide or makes us feel united with all living beings. Maybe the fairy folk went not into the hills but stayed where they where, and just changed their visibility.

That's my experience.

[cursuswalker]

A simple question: How do you know they aren't aliens?

[Ainevar]

I got into an argument about wether or not fairies exsist. He believes in An gels and Demons and points out how thousands have seen them and how there is documentation. The same can be said of Fairies. I think maybe it is something we are not meant to have an ultimate answer for.

[Vapour Trail]

On the other hand - if I said they didn't exist then i would be searching for a more rational explanation for what happened to me when i visited Tara and Baltinglass in Ireland recently. I believe, though of course I have no proof, that i was the victim of a rather mischievous little energetic entity that is commonly known in those parts as a leprechaun.

On both occasions me and my friend Kal had a simply extraordinary run of bad luck, barriers in our way, and treasured possessions going missing. All nonsense, of course, to the rational mind. Simply a run of bad luck. No matter that the trusty and reliable dowsing rods insisted that we had encountered something sentient. So you won't need to go and read about my experiences in these two posts:-

Baltinglass: http://www.hedgedruid.com/?p=6268
Chrton Crop Circle (Tara infestation): : http://www.hedgedruid.com/?p=6602

Proving nothing more than my own madness, and the unreliability of any form of divination.
Gwas.

[Tarot]

I don't know if you would consider Dryads, Nymphs, etc, as fae, but I have had personal experiences with several different ones. In my old house, the owner was going to cut down a tree in the back yard even though it wasn't sick, or even in the way at all, I spoke to him about it and he eventually decided not to cut it down, my reasoning for this was, it was where I felt safe, and heard the tree whispering music to me. I was bullied alot in that town and was chased home once, I ran to the tree and there I saw a lady looking at me, she said nothing, but I knew what she was saying, if you can understand, I'm not quite sure that I do yet either, but anyway, the bullies chased me to the tree and the lady stepped out of the bark and they ran off, from then on, I brought little gifts such as berries, apples, etc. to the tree, and she was always there when I needed someone to talk to. Water Nymphs, I have had a slightly similar experience, but in another town, down by the lake. Now whenever I am there, I always remember to sing for her, to thank her. I have had mainly good experiences with the fae, and have met a few who actually asked how Humans can see me, when they realized I was a human, they apologized and told me I smelled of the Faerie Realm and had the characteristics of them, they were quite amusing meetings. Nowadays, I just simply ask the fae for help and leave little gifts or music for them in return. There have been time that I have met malicious fae, though, 3 times, each when I have been eating, they look at me and smile coldly and I start to choke. But I don't think that they are all evil, or all good, they are they, like we are we. Maybe it's just the fact that I hear whispers everywhere, but I believe that the Fae are our anscestors. well, I hope this helped you.

[Tarot]

but, another question,

How do we know that the fae and daemons and angels are not of the same realm, or even of the same race, they could be another species of Fae for all we know

[Huathe]

I have always had an image of fey folk being as the Irish Tuatha De Danaan or Welsh Children of Don are portrayed. They are arrogant, malevolent, magical and often beautiful beings. I picture them looking much like the elves of JRR Tolkien's Lord of the Rings. Not the tiny pixies or flower faeries often portrayed today. However after the Christianation of celtic lands it has been said that the fey were reduced in significance, not only in religious stature but physically as well, becoming the diminutive pixies we so think of as faerie today.

[cursuswalker]

Such beings are 6 limbed chordata, and thus not products of evolution if they exist.

[Peter Freeman]

In Welsh legends the Fair folk, the Tylwyth Teg, are of human form and size. Frequently they form unions with a human. A classic example is the tale of the Lady of Llyn y fan fach. She comes out of the lake with her dowry and marries a young farmer. The marriage contract is ended when she receives "Tair ergyd di-achos" Three blows without cause The interesting part is that there were three sons from this union and there were in fact three brothers who were famous healers living in that area and were the children of that union.

[wyeuro]

i like what the old irish woman is said to have said: 'i don't believe in the fairies - but they're there just the same!'

i see them on a daily basis. they are very diverse, and include extraterrestrials. some are nasty, yes, others are utterly beautiful, but most are just human-like, though differently proportioned, or winged, or carapaced and antennaed. if you've ever seen them, you can't doubt their reality without doubting the whole shebang. those 'rationalists' who have 'it's all electrical discharges in the brain...' or 'you can see whatever you wish to see provided your soft in the head enough' theories replacing the fact of their own ignorance like a screen, start to look like flat-earthers to people whose psychic eyes have begun to open. the sacred grove is a great place for that to happen. the light body exercise helps too. yoga, healthy food, and maintaining a constant awareness of them, especially in gardens and wild places, but also in houses and workshops will aid the process.
wyverne /|\

[cursuswalker]

i like what the old irish woman is said to have said: 'i don't believe in the fairies - but they're there just the same!'

i see them on a daily basis. they are very diverse, and include extraterrestrials. some are nasty, yes, others are utterly beautiful, but most are just human-like, though differently proportioned, or winged, or carapaced and antennaed. if you've ever seen them, you can't doubt their reality without doubting the whole shebang. those 'rationalists' who have 'it's all electrical discharges in the brain...' or 'you can see whatever you wish to see provided your soft in the head enough' theories replacing the fact of their own ignorance like a screen, start to look like flat-earthers to people whose psychic eyes have begun to open. the sacred grove is a great place for that to happen. the light body exercise helps too. yoga, healthy food, and maintaining a constant awareness of them, especially in gardens and wild places, but also in houses and workshops will aid the process.
wyverne /|\

As someone who subscribes to those theories would you like to explain to me how one can be convinced of their existence without first accepting that they exist? Are you saying that believing in them affects the way light behaves coming into your eyes? In other words that my lack of belief in them makes light rays pass through them for ME, while for you it is reflected off them?

[Huathe]

A part of me wants to believe in faeries. When I enter a forest I think of them sometimes. I generally look at faeries as simply creatures of folklore or fiction but I have wondered " maybe they are angels ". I do love to read about them and enjoy faerie art.

Leprechauns, by the way are a type of faerie. My Great Grandfather, Baxter Warren was from Ireland and believed strongly in the " Little People ". He left food for them on a mountain close to home. I don't think he actually ever saw them but I took it that they were Leprechauns.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Leprechaun

[wyeuro]

As someone who subscribes to those theories would you like to explain to me how one can be convinced of their existence without first accepting that they exist? Are you saying that believing in them affects the way light behaves coming into your eyes? In other words that my lack of belief in them makes light rays pass through them for ME, while for you it is reflected off them?

interesting questions, cursuswalker, and i would like to answer them. firstly, my seeing fairies is not a result of subscribing to any theories about them, reality or perception. i see them and theorise later - and my seeing of them is not dependent on my coming up with a scientifically credible theory. either i see what doesn't exist, as in dreams when symbols manifest as visions, or what i see exists. just as my subjective assessment is employed in believing in my visible material surroundings, so my experiences of seeing ethereal beings are subjectively assessed, and it can't be otherwise until we develop tools for viewing what 'science' doesn't yet 'believe in' - the worlds beyond the veil - etheric and astral beings, for example. the fairy sight differs so much from dream-visions that it's unreasonable for me to believe they come about in anything like the same way. it's my belief that, as a function of a thinking planet, our culture leads little children to fairy rings and bestows the gift of second sight on the brave, hard-working few who are willing to work hard at becoming adepts of the fairy faith. trying to explain this is like trying to describe the colour blue to a colour-blind person. they have to believe what the majority describe, but when a minority describes what the majority can't sense, that's when you're up against it.

i'm not in a position to explain, only theorise about what is happening when i see them. i don't believe it's possible to explain how dream vision is made in the absence of light. some visions, eg of gnomes and some kinds of elves, occur only when i'm looking at them with eyes open - i catch sight of them among the plants while i'm gardening or harvesting garden produce. the same eyes that see the plants, also see fairies. others occur when i'm dozing as remotely viewed, and they too are not like dreams. there's an intense awareness of another mind or minds in contact with one's own that is quite absent from dream sequences.

as for how i could have 'etheric' vision, or 'the fairy sight', while you haven't, i can only say that during my life, sometimes i've had it, and sometimes i haven't. perhaps we open our eyes gradually in stages, seeing the material world first, then as our optics evolve, we begin to see also the astral world, the ethereal world and the other worlds of other substances in which we are embedded.

in obodry the gwersi refer to 'opening the psychic senses' - it's only a theory that 'psychic' 'senses' exist, and the idea is offered as a seed thought, but it reflects a commonly held belief - we have special senses developing which can be activated by meditation, auto-hypnotic suggestion and yeah, drinking clary sage tea, eating violets and semi-ripe mulberries and fully immersing ourselves in guided visualisations. when you study the range of responses to doing so, as i did for several years as a bardic and ovate tutor, you get convincing concensus.

i perceived fairies without seeing them, and talked to them constantly till i was eight, never tiring of the solitary fantasy, though the only reward for it came from them themselves. then i lost the rapport until i was about thirty. so the same pair of eyes sometimes can and sometimes can't. i then began to practice yoga, meditation and other techniques specifically designed to allow me to see the fairies that i knew were there on the edge of my perception. since most people with the fairie sight agree with me that it takes years of hard work to acquire and maintain it, of living apart from the hustle and bustle of towns, and maintaining good relations with all your neighbours, of eating and drinking moderately and loving nature, and perhaps it is necessary to have a tradition of it in the family, as i have on both sides.

if you want to understand more - hope this isn't mistaken for advertising - i wrote a book on this subject about ten years ago, with a foreword by philip carr-gomm. it's out of print now but you can download it for free as a pdf file here: http://wyldwyverne.wordpress.com/2010/1 ... wild-moon/ ‎ or read it online here: https://docs.google.com/leaf?id=0B-6fXq ... ZDYw&hl=en. if you visit my blog, there are several articles on the subject of seeing fairies. none of them deal scientifically with the physiology of second-sight. perhaps i should go into it more. to find them, click on 'the fairy dimensions' in my category cloud. not meaning to self-advertise but it is on topic.

wyverne /|\

[cursuswalker]

Let's assume that such things exist, for the sake of argument.

Let's also assume that you see them in the same way you see anything else: by light reflecting off them and arriving on your retina. If this is the case then I should be able to see them too.

There are 3 other alternatives:

1) They actually emit, or reflect, another kind of light that one has to learn how to see.

2) some mechanism means that information about them is "added" to information coming into the eye and that, once again, one has to learn how to pick this up. This alternative also means that what you "see" may not be their true form of course. A chilling thought.

3) Hallucination.

Of these three alternatives only 3 has any evidence in it's favour that is consistent with the known, and reported, facts.

[inis]

Let's also assume that you see them in the same way you see anything else: by light reflecting off them and arriving on your retina. If this is the case then I should be able to see them too.

I don't see them with my two physical eyes (at least they never allow me to actually look at them with these eyes - they can move quite quickly, you know, and all I catch with the corner of my eyes is a strange, flickering movement)...

...but I don't find it that hard to see, sense or hear them in the Otherworld, or simply put, in my Inner Grove. You will have made the experience of meeting other beings there, won't you? Well, I think that these "beings" all feel differently to me - the presence of someone like a god is different from that of a power animal (or for example messenger animal). When I first "saw" the little folk in my Inner Grove (with the third eye), they looked rather like small points of light flying around, a bit like fireflies maybe. But they behaved like faeries, playfully and giggling their tinkling laughter - and they laughed at me, started to fly around me and tease me a bit. They explained that I disturbed a celebration of theirs and asked me to leave (at that time I still thought it was MY Inner Grove, and didn't understand yet that it's one place in the Otherworld I'm ALLOWED to use rather than owning it...).

Since then I have seen them in different forms and shapes, and yes, the Little People are very different from each other - there are personalities one would refer to as queens or kings, with an aura of might and wisdom, other rather like - well, pixies, brownies, gnomes, however folklore has named them.

I know a person (in real life) who believes that in an earlier incarnation he has led a life in the faerie world (and still misses it a lot)... then I bought a little black book in UK (called "The Little People of the British Isles" or something), where I found an illustration of a fey being. This picture was so very similar to that guy I know (and even my husband confirmed that, who is quite sceptical about everything) it really seemed like "magic". I wanted to do a scan and send that illustration to the faerie guy as an e-mail, but somehow the scanning process wouldn't work at once... (of course not!) so I gave it up for the evening and prepared myself to go to bed, telling myself that I would do the scan the next day.
When undressing I accidentally rang the wind chime in my room... and then I got this strange feeling of someone or something wanting to contact me rather urgently. I tried to open my perception to the Otherworld (though not yet in a state of trance or sleepiness) and, well, heard in my head (like I hear beings in my head while doing gwers work, for example - I mean, you are supposed to talk to certain "persons" in the gwersi, you know) a voice who told me that I should not send this picture to that guy. "He must find it out all by himself, you are not allowed to help him like this."
Well, I exchanged some more sentences with that voice, asking silly questions like "why am I not to help him?" and "who are you anyway?"
Of course I didn't get "proper" answers from that voice (who was simply a messenger and nobody "special"), and was laughed at a lot for all my silly questions... that's how it goes with the Little People, it's hard to get straight information from them - and you always feel like somebody very dumb and lumpish.

That enough? I know, it's always hard not to sound silly when talking about subjects other people don't believe in... and this is very definitely something I can't proof in a scientifical sense, I can only tell about my experiences. Here they are, now you can make fun out of them...

[cursuswalker]

It sounds no different to theism to me. The projection of an inner voice onto something external in order to lend it authority.

You mention the Inner Grove and talking to beings in the context of Druidry, doubtless aimed at my atheism. As far as I am concerned these exercises involve the intense use of one of the greatest possessions of the human mind: IMAGINATION.

[treegod]

Imagination is a real realm and should be more properly called Imagi-Nation.

[Jake]

There is a huge amount of lore in Britain to do with faeries, and almost all of it is about how to keep them away, how to rescue people they have kidnapped, how to make them leave you alone and how to keep them happy in the hope that they will not be unkind to you. They are generally depicted as having a very different sense of morality from humans. By all accounts, nothing is ever a gift, most things they provide have a price and my own experience has not given me any reason to doubt the wisdom of my ancestors on this. I advise caution, and care in all matters relating to the Fey.

I think Katie made an excellent point here (almost a year ago wow) and it doesn't seem anyone's responded to it.

The folklore or received wisdom is pretty much unanimous that almost all of these beings are at best unhelpful and troublesome and at worst vicious and murderous. Even the most beneficent among them, like tomtes, brownies and hobs, clearly the remains of pre-Christian household gods, have to be carefully appeased or they get grumpy and play very nasty tricks.

Wyeuro, Inis, and anyone else, how do your personal experiences with fairies compare to the stories about them?

Given that traditionally they are held to have either deceitful or even malevolent motives in their interactions with humans, if fairies are talking to you should you ever believe what they say?

For a different approach altogether, there is a great novel called Jonanthan Strange and Mr Norrell which although fictional, I thought really captured the mind of fairy and the cultural difference between the English and Fairies. It is well researched, well drawn and brilliantly constructed, weaving folklore, fact and fantasy in a brilliant way. I really enjoyed it, couldn't put it down,

Love this book!